The Black Rose

Who’s

world is it, today?

Over many years, Andreas developed the
habit

of navigating through cities on foot. In his early twenties, he
covered the city of

Frankfurt in one bitter cold, winter day. He
traversed through the long Mediterranean

coast of Beirut in three
long hours of unbearable heat. Alone, fast paced, headlong,

one
dimensionally, he consumed the city of Beirut whole, drank its cool
breeze,

inhaled its aromatic tobacco off its crowded streets, and ate
its delicious fresh

fruit with his hungry eyes.

Andreas remembers Frankfurt as dull,
filled

with corporate shops. From the slow, grounded perspective of
the walk, the shops all

looked the same. They were manned by soulless
men, suffocating in their unappealing

ties. The ties, like the boring
men who were tied by them, looked the same, as if they

were lifted
from the same stuffy magazine. Sometimes the men would look at
Andreas.

Some would look sympathetically. Some smiled. Some were
utterly intrigued taking in

his dark, supple skin, the early receding
of his line of curly, black hair. Others

were too harassed by life to
pay much attention. They noticed, however, that an other

was in their
midst, and so they stared.

Thinking of Beirut, Andreas’

memory is
washed by the deep Mediterranean Sea. He remembers waking up to the
roar

of cranes restoring the city that was ruined by war. It was five
o’clock in the

morning, and the city was awake. He rose, too, to see
the city. Walking there was

different than the orderly, sterile
intersections of Frankfurt. Motorcycles, cars,

buses, and people
mercilessly passed at the same time. Courtesy was foreign,

replaced
by survival of the fittest and the fastest. The drivers would stick
their

necks out to curse from the top of their lungs. The
motorcyclists danced around the

traffic. Pedestrians dodged with sure
hands and quick feet. A shaken Andreas was

amused. But he would learn
the command of the narrow streets. He waded into the

traffic, the
cars coming near enough to finish him. He weaved through the

tiny
unoccupied spaces as they opened and closed almost randomly. The taxi
drivers

were amazed. They actually smiled at Andreas for withstanding
the chaos, for joining

it himself.

That day, briefly, he had become a
Beiruti. And so he walked

on to the Mediterranean coast, the
Corniche. There, he drank freedom. His eyes focused

on the calm,
pure, perfectly blue sea, reflecting the sword of the sun. He

turned
his back to the real world. His body was in the company of the sea.
The

waves danced in front of him. Andreas felt like jumping into the
sea to count the

waves, to touch them, to glare at them. He wanted to
feel the salt water on his feet,

his hot, tired feet that had walked
him all the way to the sea. He wanted to reward

his aching toes, his
falling arches, his callused heels. They had brought him to

this
place. He soaked them not knowing that years later that his habit of
walking,

his joyous relationship with his feet would get him into
more trouble than he could

imagine.

It was a scorching hot day. One day in
middle summer of 1995, in

his mid-life. Andreas was walking from
Boston University to Somerville. The heat had

become unbearable. It
had hit the one hundred-degree mark. The thirty-minute walk

on
memorial drive from BU to Harvard Square was always breathtaking.
Andreas always

took the bike paths, closely observing the scene at
the Charles. When it is extremely

hot, as it was that day, the walk
is very quiet, almost lonely. Andreas almost never

pays attention to
Memorial Drive which runs along the quiet, green river. He did

so
only to cross. For no reason Andreas could see, a driver in an aging
blue truck

gave him the finger, and the passengers in the back called
him names while they

streaked by on the highway. But he didn’t even
look back at the truck. He continued

to look on into traffic. Andreas
had long before developed the habit of prostitutes

who know that they
are being called names, but who have mastered the habit of

not
hearing them. That is how he fends for himself. A few minutes later,
and

Andreas found himself passing through Union Square, fast
approaching his destination.

He saw an old couple supported by their
sturdy canes, carrying laundry baskets, and

chatting away, happily.
The woman dropped by a Laundromat and came back with cold

drinks for
her companion. He thanked her, gave her a gentle kiss, and sat by in
the

shade to enjoy it. Nearby, a young mother was struggling with a
five-year-old, who was

giving her grief. He was screaming, and
Andreas heard him say, "Mom. I do not

want to go to school.
Never."

"Why?" inquired his

puzzled
mother. He answered with quavering lips,

"Kathy told me that I

cannot play
with her toys. I am not allowed. Only white kids can play with

those
toys."

The mother appeared shocked. She looked
angry, but

controlled herself. She saw Andreas through the corner of
her eye. He too must have

looked shocked, but pretended as if he did
not hear it. He returned her look, with

sympathy and understanding.
He decided not to make contact, and proceeded toward Davis

Square.

Soon he was at a corner, big, brown
house situated between Beech and

Elm streets in Somerville. Andreas
was there in that square, admiring a street scene,

fated by his feet
to encounter an older man busily tending to his garden and

painting
the fence of the house. As soon as he arrived at that corner,

some
beautiful roses, newly bloomed, caught his eye. They invited him to
see them

before they withered in the hands of the unbearable heat.

Andreas tried to start

a conversation
and remarked, "I love these roses."

No response from

the busy gardener. No
acknowledgment that he heard a sound. He continued painting.

Andreas repeated, "Oh. I love
those beautiful roses." Not a peep.

Not a word.

He continued painting, even more
vigorously. Andreas was preparing

to leave. He thought an encounter
had been missed, but shortly before he left, he saw

the man abruptly
discontinue his task, and quickly go into his house. He came

back
with a black spray. For a moment Andreas thought he was going to
shoot him. He

flinched, preparing for the worst. But he didn’t spray
him. He remembers what he did,

always, as the aborting of love, the
spread of hate. He plucked a rose, painted it

black, and gave it to
him furtively.

"Here, here take a black

rose."

Andreas was stunned by his action. He
threw his hands wildly into

the air. He was scared of the change in
his body. His eyes grew larger. His nose was

puffed, like a tigers,
ready for a fight. His ears were hot and tingly. His whole

body
trembled, and he threw himself on a nearby bench to calm down. That
was when

Andreas knew that he was in a rage, too hot to touch, like
an iron. All that he did is

stare back at the old man in spite of
himself, and he flung the poor rose to the

ground. The old man must
have sensed fury hatching in Andreas?s red eyes, as he stood

there
staring him down. He retreated to the safety of his house. For a
moment,

Andreas felt like avenging physically. He thought of pursuing
him back to that very

room from which he emerged with that dark
spray. He wanted to splash his face with

paint. He stalked outside
the gate making a huge fuss. Andreas hoped the old man would

call the
police, and he would have a chance to make a report; but what good,
he

thought, would that do in this city notorious for its hate? They
probably would put

him in jail for roughing up the old man, oblivious
to the fact that he has been

savaged. But in their eyes, nothing
justifies for a dark skinned man to dare a white

man, not matter what
the cause. It had been this way for centuries. Very few things

had
changed.

While Andreas was sadly thinking that
way, he walked away

quietly. For days after the event, Andreas could
not clear the encounter from his

heart. It kept burning there. He
went over the event again and again. He could not

find any comfort,
from anywhere. He despaired, thinking that he had been

defiled
forever, only because he found a rose beautiful.

It was in a bar

later that night that
he finally felt calm enough to tell the story. His friend

Joseph, one
of whom he confided the story to said,

"Oh, that story made

me cringe. It
is sickening on the one hand. But, I wonder if it might not have

had
a local meaning for the old guy. Maybe he is Irish. And this was a
way of

giving you something that fit your skin color." The table
considered it briefly.

But they knew better.

"I know, I know, it is a terrible
way of otherizing

people." He stopped, and fell into thought, by
covering his face and staring at

the wall.

Andrew joined in, "Yes, people.
God knows why they do what they

do. If he meant well by it, why did
he not say so? He got me confused. I don’t know

what to think. Why
the anger, if he meant well?"

Andreas goes over this

idea again and
again, whenever he remembers the black rose. In one of his walks,

he
was overtaken by thought about the incident. The heat was a major
factor that

day. But it does not explain everything. In spite of the
heat, he was drawn towards

nature: its beeches, its roses and its
people, lovingly and wondrously. Andreas

wondered about himself. Was
he bragging, declaring himself superior to whites? Was he

saying that
they were incapable of his kind of love? No, he knew better. Knew
that

they loved also, but only what they understood. He could not
force acceptance. They

were doing nothing wrong, at least in their
minds. Andreas continued to talk about his

experience. A middle-aged
woman who overheard broke in one day to say that the frail

man had
passed away recently, and added that she knew him.

"Perhaps," she said, "the
black rose had a meaning in Irish

culture, since he is Irish."

She was the second person to make the
point

about his Irishness. Andreas could sense that she almost wanted
to tell him that he

was a nice person.

Andreas learned that the old man was
found dead, one Sunday

afternoon, exactly a year after he last saw
him with his roses. He was seventy. He had

survived three massive
heart attacks. The fourth killed him. He came to the US, from

Ireland
like all other immigrants, just hoping to make a better living. He
was

nineteen when he arrived and began his career as a bus boy in
South Boston putting in

long, sweltering hours. Eventually, he was
made a waiter, and a few years later

assistant manager, and then
manager. A picture kept on his mantle shows him

celebrating that
final promotion in a dark suit and bow tie. Extremely thin with

an
elegant frame almost lost in the ill-tailored suit, his freckled
face, red hair,

green eyes, and sharply sculpted nose sit atop the
padded shoulders of the suit like

the belong to another body. Even
until his death, the old man drank massively and ate

generously.

Andrew, Andreas discovered, played
baseball briefly but

professionally; excelled at chess; and thanks to
his thin frame, moved elegantly on

the dance floor. But that was
Andrew in his sweet twenties. The thirties treated him

worse. In his
late thirties he began his struggle with heart disease. A year

before
the first heart attack, he had bought a nice restaurant in South
Boston, in

which he worked much too hard. Most nights, he slept on a
cot in the back of the

restaurant. He thought of marriage. It never
happened. Before he knew it, he was

nearing sixty still battling his
heart. He sold the restaurant, and was finally

confined to his home.
His front door on Elm Street was shielded by a huge beech

tree,
located in the center of a large lawn, richly garnished by roses and
a

healthy spread of sunflowers, his labor of love. They say he was
nice to his own kind,

a little shy, a loner. Andreas guesses that
people like Andrew are typically that way.

They love within their
circle. Andreas loves that way, too. Included in that love are

all
those things he needs to continue loving himself. Andreas is nice to
a cashier,

so that she might give him a break when he needs it. He is
even nicer to a parking lot

attendant so that he will charge him
less. He is unbelievably charming at parties to

the right people so
that he can use them. Once he secures his needs, he forgets them

all.
The cashier calls him, and suddenly, he is out of the country. The
parking lot

attendant inquires about him and he cannot even recall
his name. The people he met at

parties invite him again.

He suddenly loses interest. Can Andreas
hate? No. He

cannot. For the same reason that he cannot love: a
steadfast refusal to forget what he

has seen. The old man is dead.
Andrew is dead, and yet Andreas cannot forget. Nor can

he seem to
walk down the side streets of his home city the way he once could.
Each

time, he is struck by his anger. Then ashamed of it. Is he so
right? Is the old man so

wrong? He is afraid that he is right this
time. He feels compelled to forgive, is

driven to forgive, but he
cannot forget. He must always remember. Remembering is hard,

he
thinks. Forgetting is easy.

Many years later, as an old man,
Andreas

has a winter dream. He sees the frail man somewhere in a
crowded walk of a

Mediterranean coast. The frail man is walking
alone, and struggling to make his way

through a deafening crowd of
slow strollers, where hundreds breathe in the sea breeze

and admire
the delicious sunset. He too had come to do the same. And there

was
Andrew in the middle of the crowd, uncomfortably, trying to watch the
sunset.

He stood out in the crowd. He was a shining piece of the
scene. In the company of the

bronze and copper skins burned by the
sun, his pale white color, his blushed red

cheeks newly exposed to
the sun, were an amazing presence. The natives took many

secrets
gazes at him. Some appeared envious. Others, simply awe struck by

his
whiteness. But he intrigued all of them. Many would have liked to
touch him.

But they did not dare. He shifted his weight in the
attention bestowed on him. He

nervously leaned on one foot, then
another, then his cane while they looked on. And so

he missed the
final moments of the sunset as the lip of the sea curved and

parted
to take in the flattening edges of the sun. And as suddenly as the
crowd

appeared, it dispersed. Some off to a late evening to work.
Some to home. But all of

them were leaving. The show was over.